Social Media Networking

Social media provides new platforms for adding value to customers and potential customers and promoting your brand.

Adding value on the web has always been about providing interesting, accurate, and helpful information and engaging with people. Some of the things that Social Media makes easier:

1. Responding to questions or issues from customers in the environment they have chosen
2. Giving supporters a place to express their enthusiasm and rewarding them for contributing by paying attention
3. Uploading and promoting new information (video, white papers, related news) which is of value to potential or existing customers
4. Providing pertinent information of interest to customers only
5. Actively asking for customer input where appropriate

LinkedIn and similar platforms also provide new ways of interacting with past, current, and prospective employees as well as offering information.

Measurement

Various types of measurement tools are available - these fall into 3 categories - searching for conversations, counting numbers of viewers/likes/followers, and tracking referrals to the website. Understanding whether the social media involvement has helped to achieve the objective of providing a better customer experience can be inferred to an extent from the content of customer comments and number of customers who engage in conversation or promote your content to others.

There are several tools for searching social media platforms for conversations. These are also important as a research tool - it's important to listen to these conversations to find out what people are saying, and to take part where appropriate.

Measurement of viewer numbers is found in several ways - from analytics showing referrals from social media, stats on Tweetdeck as to 'retweets', likes and followers on Facebook/Twitter, and stats available from other websites where your site may be listed or where you publish content.

Displaying Twitter and Facebook on your website

Phosphor has developed a tool for displaying Twitter and Facebook updates with associated images and videos on websites we develop. We can filter these updates in several ways.

This makes it easier to make daily updates in one place. Changing content keeps the viewer interested and helps to improve search ranking.

Forums and other websites

Aside from the obvious social media platforms, there are forums specific to various topics which host lively conversations about the topic. These sites offer another place for promoting content of value to your customers.